MINNEAPOLIS — As you stand over your approach shot at the first hole of the Lakemont course at Stone Mountain Golf Club, the carving into the side of the course’s namesake stares back at you, for many in an uncomfortable fashion.

The Confederate Memorial Carving is the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world, and it depicts the three most significant parties from the side that both lost the war and history’s moral judgment of slavery — Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

Stone Mountain also has the dishonor of being the place where the Ku Klux Klan revival occurred a century ago, one sparked by the popularity of the silent film “Birth of a Nation.”

So, you might understand why the town in the northern suburbs of Atlanta could be considered a place where racial scars are slow to heal. And yet, in the Phillies clubhouse are two men — one black, one white — who attended the same high school in Stone Mountain a generation apart and have shown that sometimes the wrongheaded actions of others doesn’t have to create a disconnect between those with good intentions.

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Wally Joyner knows what it’s like to be the “It” guy as a young player having a breakout season in the major leagues. A smooth-swinging left-handed hitting first baseman, Joyner arrived with the California Angels and “Wally World” became a sensation in 1986. He hit .290 with 22 homers and 100 RBIs for a team that won the A.L. West. He was an All-Star (incredibly, his only All-Star nod), finished runner-up to Jose Canseco for Rookie of the Year and seventh in the MVP voting.

Joyner finished his career with 2,060 hits, 1,106 RBIs, a .289 average and more walks (833) than strikeouts (825).

Before those 16 big-league seasons happened, Joyner played at Brigham Young, a collegiate career that earned him a third-round selection in the draft. But before that, he was an undrafted high school player at Redan High in Stone Mountain, class of 1980.

When Joyner agreed to join the Phillies as a hitting coach over the winter, he picked up on his connection with Brown, who moved to Stone Mountain prior to his senior year in high school after spending most of his life in the Tampa, Fla., area.

“That’s how I broke the ice with him this year when I came over to the Phillies,” Joyner said.

Spending just one season at Redan likely had something to do with Brown’s lack of awareness of Joyner’s legacy at the school, which includes a retired number. But much more has changed in the 26 years between Joyner’s time at Redan and Brown’s senior season in 2006, when the Phils drafted him in the 20th round and lured him away from a football scholarship to the University of Miami. When Joyner went to Redan, he had a handful of black teammates as a multi-sport athlete. This year, Redan High won its first Georgia state title in baseball with a team made up entirely of teenagers of color, an inspiring sight for a sport where there have been concerns that African-Americans have become less interested in pursuing success in it.

“(Brown) would shake his head and say, ‘You didn’t go (to Redan), you couldn’t have gone there,’” Joyner said with a laugh. “There was a different mix. But when you played sports … that made everyone the same.”

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There has been plenty of attention paid to Domonic Brown lately. Fans of baseball love to have something new to embrace. Last season, that most significant something was Mike Trout, a.k.a. the Millville Meteor, the South Jersey native who steamrolled his way into Anaheim’s lineup and made people think long and hard about whether his rookie season, much of which was played before he turned 21, was impressive enough to deny the first Triple Crown winner in 45 years (Miguel Cabrera) the American League Most Valuable Player award.

This season there seems to be a new face stealing the show every month. In April, Braves catcher Evan Gattis and his wild gypsy tale of quitting baseball after high school and wandering the country was mesmerizing. May was the month of Dom, as he slugged 12 home runs, punishing mistakes so often that he didn’t draw so much as a walk in that 30-day assault.

It seems June will be the month of Yasiel Puig, as the highly touted Cuban rookie had an epic opening week in the majors, piling up 13 hits (four of them homers), 10 RBIs and two outfield assists in seven games – impressive, since the Dodgers only scored 22 runs as a team for the week.

Sometimes the young players who experience a tidal wave of fame aren’t able to ride it long. Others, like Joyner, might come back to earth a little, but remain solid players for many years.

Joyner has little doubt that Brown’s mercurial May is not an outlier.

“What he’s doing, is what he is capable of doing,” he said. “I think he’s going to be able to do this for a long period of time. I think, barring injury, he is going to have an incredible career.

“He has had an incredible month. He should be pleased with it and not take it lightly. I would think the first month of the season he was finding himself. He was still working his way into feeling comfortable and feeling he belongs here.”

Joyner certainly had a hand in helping Brown reconstruct his swing into a compact, powerful thing of beauty. But he believes what took Brown from being an average player in April to extraordinary since came from within.

“I’m not sure what it was,” Joyner said, “but something happened where, after a ball game – driving home, talking to someone – the light went on and he realized, ‘I belong here.’

“It’s not often you see a guy do something within the spectrum of what he’s done. What he has been doing for the past month is what every player wishes for. I’d venture to say there are a lot of players out there who would like to put his uniform on right now.

“What Domonic has done, this is in the history books. This isn’t a spring training episode. This counts, and he can fall back on it if need be.”

Clearly, Brown and Joyner have bridged the generational and racial divides that playing baseball in the shadow of Stone Mountain could cause. Early in spring training, Brown said the Joyner’s arrival and the immediate click between them made him feel like “God maybe sent an angel down to me.”

Surprisingly, that angel was raised in the shadow of a memorial that so easily could have built a wall between men of different races. Instead, they bonded.

“I think it allowed us to start a relationship and a line of communication more easily than with someone else,” Joyner said. “It’s been exciting.”